November 18, 2016

The FanDuel and DraftKings merger is confirmed, Amazon Prime Video goes global, Apple is looking into U.S. manufacturing, BuzzFeed is raising a $200 million Series G flat round and Sesame Street's VC invests in Yup. All this on Crunch Report. Read More

(Paul Mirengoff) I agree with John's assessment that Mike Pompeo is a great appointment for CIA Director. Pompeo was a leading opponent of the Iran deal. He worked with our friend Sen. Tom Cotton to discover important secret side deals to that agreement. Pompeo is also a proponent of detaining terrorists at Gitmo. In addition, he supported the "enhanced" interrogation methods used during the Bush administration. Regarding CIA personnel who employed such

Twenty-six states states led by Texas were joined by the Obama administration and immigrant-rights groups in seeking to freeze a challenge to the outgoing president's immigration reforms until President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

PHOENIX (AP) - A federal judge in Tucson, Arizona, has ordered the Border Patrol to improve conditions at its holding facilities in most of the state, saying the agency was not following its own standards by keeping migrants in crowded, cold cells without proper bedding.

(John Hinderaker) When a Republican wins the presidency, it is always fun to ridicule the celebrities who vowed to leave the country should such a horror take place. To my recollection, not one has ever followed through on such a threat (or promise, depending on how you look at it). This year is no exception. Michael Ramirez captures my sentiments exactly. Click to enlarge: Celebrities may have played a larger than usual

You know you've been wanting to play around with that new version of Microsoft Paint – if only to see if it is, indeed, that big of an update to the long maligned drawing application that's shipping with Windows since the mid-1980s. Paint 3D is unquestionably one of the biggest refreshes in the application's history. In fact, it's really a complete rethink, one… Read More

Senator Jeff Sessions, President-elect Donald Trump's pick for attorney general, doesn't have a record of going after big business, but he has signaled that he's willing to be tough on malfeasance, even when it involves some of the world's largest corporations.

ST. LOUIS (AP) - Missouri's highest court says it won't intervene in a lawsuit by activists seeking an independent probe of a prosecutor's handling of grand jury proceedings in the Ferguson police shooting of Michael Brown.

The Missouri Supreme Court announced in an order obtained by media outlets Friday that ...

Hyperloop One tells TechCrunch it has just settled an ongoing lawsuit brought against the company by its former co-founder Brogan BamBrogan and several former employees. BamBrogan, David Pendergrast, William Mulholland and Knut Sauer filed the lawsuit against the company this summer, claiming the technology they built was being "strangled" by the venture capitalists who had… Read More

It seems everyone is interested in big data these days. From social scientists to advertisers, professionals from all walks of life are singing the praises of data science. In the social sciences, many scholars apparently believe it will lend their subject a previously elusive objectivity and clarity. However, when it comes to the social sciences, big data is a false idol. Read More

Facebook's fake news frenzy continued as the company came under scrutiny for its debated influence on the U.S. election, LinkedIn was blocked in Russia and a human CRISPR-ed for the first time. Also, the human species has about 1,000 years left according to Stephen Hawking. But do we deserve survival? The existence of Coca-Cola's selfie bottle points toward no. Read More

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - National open government and public records experts say a policy adopted by the state lawmakers this week keeping all legislative contracts secret from the public makes the state an exception to the rule.

"With regard to general procurement law, this would be an extreme outlier," Emily ...

I'm not trying to brag or anything (I am), but I comfortably ran a half marathon wearing the first version of the 42mm Apple Watch with a classy, stainless steel band. So, when I heard about Nike's version of the Apple Watch, it's not like I thought, "Finally! I totally need this because running with the regular Apple Watch sucks." That's not to say I… Read More

Steve Bannon, whom President-elect Donald Trump named chief strategist, tells Hollywood Reporter in a profile that critics are wrong and he's "not a white nationalist, I'm a nationalist. I'm an economic nationalist." "The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia"; says American's looking to ''not get f---ed over" Bannon says Trump agenda is "everything related to jobs" "With negative interest rates throughout the world, it's the greatest opportunity to rebu

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, who briefly challenged Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, will ring in 2017 on his old stomping grounds. His Irish folk-rock band is the scheduled entertainment for the New Year's Eve party at a popular Annapolis music venue.

Silicon Valley has been lampooned as the place where entrepreneurs like to declare they're "making the world a better place" when they're actually just trying to make money. But now a new initiative called Debug Politics is encouraging the tech industry to live up to the catchphrase — by helping to fix the political system. Jesse Pickard, CEO of "brain… Read More

(Paul Mirengoff) Jeff Sessions is Donald Trump's nominee for Attorney General, I'm delighted to report. Sessions was said to be under consideration for Secretary of Defense. However, the Senator's expertise and background militated in favor of the AG position. It's a good sign that Trump recognized this. I hope he takes the same approach to selecting his Secretary of State, for example. Over the years, I have admired Sen. Sessions from afar